


A wish for the forgotten

by Lost_gallifrey



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Demons, Friendship, Gang Rape, Graphic Violence, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:30:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lost_gallifrey/pseuds/Lost_gallifrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a simple cave exploration goes wrong, Varric and Cole are separated from the rest of the group. Trapped in a tunnel network, they find demons lurking in the dark who are all too happy to entertain themselves with a Compassion spirit.<br/>It never should have been like this.....</p>
            </blockquote>





	A wish for the forgotten

The last few loose rocks trickled down over the mounded cave in like the dull echo of a closing tomb. Then the silence was almost complete, a distant thumping was probably Inquisitor Trevelyan or The Iron Bull, trapped on the other side of the impassable rocks; even the powerful qunari would take days to shift the rubble.

“Well....shit.” Varric Tethrys kicked at a stray pebble, sending it skittering into a clump of luminous mushrooms. The trap that triggered the rockslide should have been obvious. Varric blamed himself for not detecting it sooner.....hopefully the Inquisitor and Bull had been far enough back to avoid injury.

Cole shifted nervously behind Varric, wringing his hands and staring around the cave with unblinking eyes.”Andraste's tits, how did I miss the trigger plate....so obvious it might as well have been flying its own banner.” Cole's somber face twitched into a slightly gap-toothed and guileless smile. “I didn't see it either.”

“Thanks, kid.” Varric couldn't help but smile up at the spirit. With luck the cave system would be a small one, they could find the missing farm kids and be back to the Charger's camp before dark. He was going to owe Bull and Trevelyan a few rounds after this mess. There wasn't much point in staying here in the semi-darkness and staring at a pile of fallen rocks, so Varric hitched Bianca higher on his shoulder and moved off down the tunnel, Cole padding silently at his heels.

The tunnel wound back and forth for what felt like hours. Branches and offshoots did little more than end in dead ends cluttered with old mine tailings and dark, flooded sections where the water smelled dank and ripe with stagnant rot. In places the walls were the slick smoothness of water worn limestone, in others the deep mushrooms clung to the jagged edges of crudely hewn rock.

Cole was wary and nervous. “It's like the pit. Old, twisting....tangled secrets in the dark. But the song is all wrong.” His eyes were widely luminous in the eerie fungal light, but Varric could tell he was unsettled. Given the recent revelations with the Templar in Redcliffe, Varric couldn't blame Cole for being uncomfortable in the dark claustrophobic atmosphere of the tunnels.

They stopped to rest near a patch of particularly well lit mushrooms, and were soon joined by a few curiously shy nugs who were attracted by the pieces of travel bread Cole tossed to them.

“You should probably be eating that, kid.” Varric sighed as a nug scuttled past with a chunk of bread. Cole was still new to the more human sides of his nature, and with the exception of the apple-cinnamon bread that the skyhold cooks made, he seemed unimpressed by the concept of regular meals. In fact his ration packs usually made their way into the eager mouths of refugees, passing scouts, stray dogs and hungry village kids long before Cole ever got around to eating them.

“Small mind, always hungry.” Cole ignored Varric's recommendation and stared, entranced, as a nug scrambled up onto his lap, snuffling for crumbs and licking hopefully at his fingers. “The door closed, no more soft hands, no more lemon scones.”

Varric had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but it spoke well of there being people in the cave network somewhere. Hopefully they could find them (and their lemon scones) before Varric had to start eyeing the nugs as dinner.

“They wouldn't like that.” Cole informed him sternly. 

The nugs scattered back into the darkness when Varric and Cole stood up. The tunnel loomed ever onwards like a gaping, toothless mouth and Varric was heartily sick of it.

“Solus said dwarves are supposed to hear the stone, hear the song that goes into the rock. Down, down, down.” Cole tilted his head in confusion, “but you don't like it here.”

“I've never been the best dwarf”, Varric shrugged with a laugh. “Never really found 'The Stone' all that fascinating, no matter how much Chuckles goes on about it. You're a spirit that doesn't like the fade, and I'm a dwarf who could give two shits about 'The Stone'.”

The dead girl was the first sign that something was very, very wrong. She'd died with her back to a rough door that spanned the tunnel. Her fingers were curled into claws and dark with blood from where she had clawed pieces from a support strut and jammed them under the door. 

“What happened here?” Varric wondered aloud as he crouched to get a better look. The girl had been stocky, young and wearing rough homespun cotton....she fit the description of one of the farmers kid's who had gone missing. Everyone had assumed she had run away with a boy from the neighboring farm, the one her parents disapproved of. “Damn.”

“Died in the dark. Miles said to run, but their claws were catching, cutting, and the days by the river were gone. She wanted to go back, be the girl with honeysuckle in her hair....but the dark things chewed at her insides until her blood turned black. She was gone.” Cole turned to Varric with a kind of haunted grief on his pale face. “It was her Very Bad Day. I'm sorry,” he added to the dead girl, “I couldn't help.”

If there had been any other way out of the cave, Varric would have left the door alone. He didn't want to know what could drive a girl to die in the dark, her fingers worn to white bone to keep the door closed. Had the people here mined to deep? Had they cut into some forgotten part of the Deep Roads, letting darkspawn spill free like pus from a corrupted wound? 

There was faint light showing through cracks in the dark wood, and Varric swung Bianca into his hands, clicking a bolt into place through sheer muscle memory. “You ready for this, kid? I don't know what's through there.”

“It's wrong.” Cole was gripping his knives hard enough that Varric could see the bloodless arch of his knuckles. “The circle got blurred, chalk on his shoes and then it was all wrong. They burned from the inside until they weren't them anymore.”

“Cheery thought.” 

The door swung open with a rough grind of overstressed hinges. There was veilfire burning in a blackened sconce, shedding its strange light on broken glass and desks reduced to kindling. The floor was scattered with torn scrolls and books of arcane learning, stained near to black with archs and streaks of dried blood. A lump in the corner had been human once, maybe the farm boy. He'd tried to crawl under a table to escape whatever had torn him nearly in half.

The remnants of human occupation suggested apostates had sheltered here, but mages didn't do this to people, even a bloodmage wouldn't engage in this kind of mindless carnage. Then, even as Varric pressed the familiar weight of Bianc's stock against his shoulder, the shadows started to move and he knew what the girl had been hiding from.

Some of them had been human once. The tattered and bloodstained rags of robes still hung from malformed and misshapen limbs, the glassy eyes above a gaping, lamprey mouth still sickeningly recognizable. Abominations. The fear that drove the Templars to rule the circle of magi with an iron fist.

There were other things stirring in the shadows, creeping closer to titter over their new prey. These had never been human, their spidery limbs and rictus grins the products of the fade. Demons called through by the fear and pain of the apostates, feeding off their terror like men at a feast. One loped closer, a high pitched giggle rattling in its throat as Cole flinched away.

Varric put a crossbow bolt through the nearest demon, then bellowed for Cole to run as the demon tumbled backward with a shriek of fury. Standing their ground and fighting was no option, not against this many, and not when the opening on the other side of the cavern gave a tantalizing look at daylight. It was a scrap of hope that Varric clung to, even as the demons surged forward, even after he knew, maker help them, that they weren't going to make it.

Like a wave, the demons and abominations surged forward, Varric put bolts in two of them and bludgeoned a third with Bianca's stock. Cole flashed by in his peripheral vision, one of his blades opening a demon's stomach and then its throat as it grappled with its own oily viscera. There were small victories, but it was a losing battle and they both knew it.

Overwhelmed, Varric felt Bianca wrenched from his grip even as claws raked his scalp and left him blinded by his own blood. Somewhere behind him, Cole gave a sharp yelp of pain and varric felt a tremendous impact as something heavy slammed into him, throwing him like a ragdoll into one of the stone support columns. Vision swimming in a sickly haze of red, Varric spat blood and groaned at the sharp agony that triggered in his chest and side.

The thing that had hit him waded into the midst of its fellows like a huntsman bringing a pack of dogs to heel. The demon was massive, all bulbous muscle that made it shamble forward as if weighed down by its own bulk. It ended the conflict with a casually brutal backhand that brought Cole to his knees and sent one of his knives skidding off into the dark corners of the room.

Cole tried to fight back, and Varric felt sick at the inevitability of what happened next. The massive demon laughed off a slash that would have opened a lesser opponent to the bone, then grabbed for Cole, both disarming him and breaking his arm with a sharp jerk.

Varric winced at Cole's breathy cry of shocked pain. Trying to move made something grate in his chest, and tears blurred Varric's vision. It wasn't fair. Hadn't Cole suffered enough....and for it to end like this. Bitterly, Varric closed his eyes, feeling like a coward but unable to watch the brutal end to a life he had grown to treasure.

What Varric heard, instead of the carnage he expected, was ugly mocking laughter. Opening his eyes, Varric could see one of the smaller demons holding Cole still as the massive, corrupt colossus stared down at him and laughed. It wasn't a mirthful sound, it was the cruel glee of a bully who had just discovered something helpless to torment.

“Compassion!” The demon jeered through its broad, lipless mouth. “What use are you here, little spirit.” To Varric's horror the demon dropped a pawlike hand to grope between its own tree-trunk legs. “I can tell you where I hurt.”

For a moment Varric hoped Cole wouldn't understand the connotations of the gesture, but a stark fear settled on his pale face and Varric felt sick. He knew.

Cole fought like a desperate cornered animal as the demons set upon him. The horrors swarmed over him, ignoring his biting, clawing defenses, spurred on by the sultry laughs of a lust demon who flitted among them as they tugged and tore at Cole's leathers. They weren't careful, and Cole's pallid skin was streaked with blood by the time they had him stripped and wrestled, still fighting, to his knees.

Varric drew in a sharp breath as a lesser demon unfolded out of the shadows, it's bony claws settled around Varric's throat as the oversized horror gurgled out another laugh. “Keep fighting, Compassion, and I'll kill the dwarf. Slowly.”

“No, Kid....ah, no.” Varric rasped a plea through the chokehold around his neck as Cole went immediately and horribly pliant. 

Anyone else would have realized they were both going to die anyway and at least considered sparing themselves the agony and indignity of what the demon threatened. But Cole wasn't anyone else, and Varric knew it wouldn't have even crossed his mind. All Cole would have considered was that Varric would hurt.....

The lust demon, her voluptuous form a horrific corruption of sexuality, wrapped her arms around Cole, forcing her mouth against his in a sickening imitation of intimacy. Cole twitched, eyes roving away in distress as she forced his head back, fingers digging into his jaw to open his mouth to her tongue. “Good boy, Compassion,” she murmured as she pulled away, her tongue snaking out to lick a streak of blood from his cheek. “Good boy.”

 

Sickly, Varric realized he could have spared Cole this nightmare if only he had listened to Solas when the mage had advised that Cole embrace the spirit side of his nature. The kid could have walked away from this, providing his ability to not be seen worked on demons....at the very least he could have made them both forget.

“Maker, I'm sorry.” Cole's voice shook as he unconsciously gave voice to the guilt that was tearing Varric apart. “I was wrong, look what making him a person has done. My fault, my fault....its all falling away. No more books, no more wicked grace in the garden.” Cole hunched in on himself, cradling his broken wrist against his chest. “The hurt is balled like string, like Daisy's ball of twine.....wish I'd never left Kirkwall. I can't help, I'm sorry.”

“You always help, kid.” Varric's mouth burned with bile as the hulking demon pushed Cole down with a cruel hand, roughly shoving his legs apart. “You did good.”

“Yes, Compassion,” the demon mocked as it stroked itself in anticipation. “You're being so helpful....enjoy it while you can. When I'm done with you, you might not even be compassion anymore......pain maybe. Or despair.” 

As the demon shoved forward, breaching Cole's body with savage abandon, Varric could feel tears streaking down his jaw as the screaming started. It was a horrible sound, like something scared and maimed, dying alone in terror, and it cut through Varric like a finely honed knife. Eventually Cole didn't even have the strength for that, and his voice was reduced to rasping whimpers that did nothing to drown out the demon's grunts of pleasure, or the raw wet noises it made as it moved.

The smaller demons swarmed over Cole like parasites, digging claws into him as the demon still moved and rutting against his mouth until he was gagging blood. The second one moved another took its place, driving Cole past reason and sanity. His screams had faded into wrenching sobs, and finally to a catatonic, shocked silence that was somehow worse.

Unsure if Cole could even read his thoughts, Varric closed his eyes against the horrific tableau and forced himself to think of better places. Places that didn't smell of blood and the rank tang of the demon's arousal. The peace and must of Leliana's tower, the smile on her face when her wine was just right. The barn loft on a sunny day, the way Cullen whistled to himself when he thought nobody was listening. 

There was no response except when Cole whimpered 'Varric?' in a tiny, lost voice, the fingers of one outflung hand twitching toward the dwarf like a drowning man searching for a lifeline.

The demon crouched over Varric kept up its stranglehold. It hardly needed to, Varric wasn't sure he could have moved even if it had released him. The sharp stitch in his side had spread out into swollen hot ach. Half his chest felt heavy, like waterlogged cloth, and when he coughed, Varric could taste the coppery tang of blood.

“I'm right here, kid.” Varric rasped, loathing his own weakness. He could see Bianca lying mere meters away and ached for the comforting weight of the crossbow....even if all he could do was offer mercy, it would be a better end than this. But even testing the demon's focus had resulted in it tightening its grip, bracing a clawed foot against his chest in a way that made Varric shudder as the pain made lights dance and sway in his eyes. Bianca might as well have been a thousand leagues away.

The demons were getting bored. Their sport elicited little to no response anymore, even when their claws came back bloody it garnered little more than a breathy whimper. The massive demon, its groin and thighs slick with Cole's blood, swept its brethren aside and effortlessly picked their victim up by the throat. 

“Still alive Compassion?” The demon tightened its grip, mouth spread in a shark's grin as Cole clawed feebly at it's forearm. “I'm almost impressed.”

It would have ended there, with Cole hanging limply in the demon's powerful grip, were it not for the distant flare of light outside the cavern and the low roar of igniting flame. Several of the smaller demons skittered toward the disturbance, leaving clawmarks through the spatters of fresh blood on the floor. The distorted horror simply tossed Cole aside like a bored child with a broken doll. Paying no attention to its discarded plaything, the colossus shambled toward the sound of magefire.

Varric winced as Cole hit the floor in a tangle of blood streaked limbs. He had offered no resistance to the impact, and Varric couldn't even see if he was breathing. There was too much blood. The kid looked like he'd been dragged through an abattoir. The sight was made worse by the fact that the blood on his belly and thighs, that clotted on his torn knees and streaked his calves, was his own.

The demon that had held Varric released him as interest shifted away from their sport. More dark, corrupted figures were slinking toward the entrance, intent on the sounds of conflict outside. Bereft of the pleasure found by its brethren, the demon stopped to paw at Cole, it's elongated jaw twisted in a snarl of disappointment as it could rouse no response from its prey. Burying its claws in Cole's blood matted hair it shook him like a wolf shakes a rabbit, only faltering when a crossbow bolt buried itself to the fletching in its twisted back.

Reduced to crawling, Varric had scrabbled across the floor until his fumbling hands caught on the familiar bulk of Bianca. His hands felt numb and heavy, but even with the dark spots dancing in his eyes he knew there was no way he could miss, not at this range. The shot caught the demon in the back, and as it dropped Cole and turned with a shriek, Varric put a second bolt through one glittering black eye.

Varric let Bianca clatter to the floor, a sacrilege he would have protested at any other time. The recoil on the second shot had made something grind and pop inside him, and even drawing breath was becoming a struggle. The dwarf had been through enough battles alongside Hawke to recognize that he'd probably punctured a lung, and also to realize that without potions or healing magics there was nothing he could do about it. He wanted to go to Cole, to give the kid any small comfort he could, but he wasn't even sure the young man was still breathing. Would Cole return to the fade if his physical body died? Would he exist in that strange dreamworld until another great pain called him back through the veil.....would he even remember his friends? Would it be kinder if he didn't?

“N..not there.” Cole's voice was so ragged that Varric could barely hear him over the distant echoes of battle. “Lost...body is all wrong. It finds the cracks, makes them real. I don't want to go...Varric, please, I don't want to go.”

Varric watched numbly as Cole rolled onto his side, retching with the pain as he determinedly dragged himself towards the dwarf who had become both an advocate and a friend. It reminded Varric horribly of a mangy street dog he had seen run down by a carriage in kirkwall. Broken beyond repair, the mutt had hitched itself across the road to a wary looking urchin, seeking comfort from the one person who had shown it kindness.

Outside the cavern Varric could hear Bull roaring a challenge as a snaking wall of fire bathed the cave in a sea of crimson light and scattering demons to ash where it touched them. It was almost a cliche rescue, the type Varric would have penned into one of his pulp serials with a laugh and an eye roll.....except in a book the rescue wouldn't have come so late.

With a final shuddering effort, Cole dragged himself the last few inches to rest his head against Varric's thigh. “It hurts” he whimpered, trying to curl into a fetal ball.

Anyone else, Varric thought as bitter tears burned in his eyes, anyone else would have asked the important questions.'Why didn't you make them stop? Why didn't you help me?' But Cole was an inherently gentle spirit, so when he did speak there was no recrimination in his soft broken voice, only concern.

“Pain.....close, cloying, like drowning on dry land.” Cole raised a shaking hand to touch Varric's side. “You're hurt.”

“I'll be alright.” Varric stroked a hand over Cole's ragged hair, it was plastered into stiff tangles with blood and other rank fluids, but Varric didn't care and Cole pressed into the simple touch like a child seeking comfort. “It's ok.”

The Iron Bull tore into the cavern with all the power and finesse of his namesake animal, his axe leaving a trail of demon gore as he shook a few stray pieces from his horns. Varric had to watch as the qunari's fierce gaze settled on Cole, curled naked and bloody against Varric, and his expression went from rough concern, to horror, settling on a rage so intense that even the remaining demons quailed. Bull tore into them with a roar of fury. Demons went down like wheat to a scythe, the axe biting into them with a sound like a blade sinking into rotting wood.

“I'm sorry.” Cole's voice was barely audible, Varric could feel his pulse fluttering beneath his fingers like the dying struggle of a trapped bird. “You want to forget, to not see....but it doesn't work anymore.” With a monumental effort, Cole raised one hand to brush cold, bloody fingers against Varric's brow. “Forget,” he whimpered. “Forget.”

For a second, Varric wished it would work. It was a selfish thought, a desperate desire to have never witnessed the cruelty, the sheer brutality of what had been inflicted on a spirit who's very existence centered on easing the pain of others.

“Don't be sorry, kid. Don't ever be sorry.” Ignoring the white hot stab of pain the movement cause, Varric gathered Cole into his arms, wincing at the kid's guttural moan as he buried his face in Varric's shoulder. “It's going to be ok, Tiny's here. We can go home now.”

“He's angry, it makes him not afraid. The Iron Bull....” Cole trailed off with a soft sigh, his bloody mouth twitching once into a twisted half smile against Varric's tunic.

Bull's rampage had come to an end, and Varric had to close his eyes against the sick fury still stamped on his grizzled face. “Just stay, stay with me and everything's going to be fine.” Varric wasn't sure who he was trying to convince, Cole who was limp and too-cold in his arms, or himself as he gasped through the blood in his throat. It was a lie, but a kindness at the same time. Words to ease a hurt that could never be healed. So Varric thought of Skyhold, of sun on the ancient battlements as Cole whispered 'thank you' against his bloody tunic.

It was a lie, but as everything fell away to a silent dark, Varric remembered how Solas had said that Cole's nature could not be changed simply by wishing it so. The elf had been wrong then, so perhaps now, if Varric wished hard enough, they would be back in Skyhold as the wind brought the smell of the mountains through a dawn that was a rising glory of gold. It was a good wish.

**Author's Note:**

> I was having a particularly bad week when I wrote this, and for reasons unknown decided to take it out on my favorite DA:I characters. (Sorry guys, it was a REALLY bad week at work)  
> That said, I always wanted to write a fix-it-followup, mostly because I felt kinda bad about having written this in the first place!


End file.
